From tracking fires through Twitter to breaking news before you see it on a major news network, we're constantly hearing stories of how social media connections enable the community to help each other out in times of crisis. We love these stories. So here are five unique tales of social media coming to save the day.

1. An emergency personnel support network

Dr. Maurice Ramirez is an ER physician, disaster preparedness consultant, and social media expert. While he utilizes and relies on tools such as police radios and Nextel push-to-talk phones for official communications, his team of emergency response personnel need their own communications channels for social support.

For emergency situations, such as Hurricane Ike in Texas, Ramirez set up a closed Twitter network that's used for private non-official conversation and communication among his team and their partners, the Red Cross and Loews Emergency Response Team. The private network allows them to speak openly and freely about the stresses and the isolation they're dealing with. The Twitter network has become critical for their disaster recovery operations, said Ramirez. "You always have that feeling that the team down the road is superhuman," Ramirez said, "When you're dealing with 300 rescues a day and you're miles from your colleagues, you need that social support that reminds you that you're only human."

During a disaster, the top issues are usually locating potable water, gasoline, food, shelter, and electricity. The ones who can best uncover that information are emergency personnel deployed on the ground in the disaster areas. Ramirez's team and their partners use Twitter to keep each other informed as to the location of available services and supplies. It's important to keep the network private, said Ramirez. Lack of non-critical personnel on the network reduces cross chatter and the privacy prevents rumors from spreading.

In the case of Hurricane Ike, not only did the Twitter network help them find water, gasoline, and shelter, but it was also critical for warning personnel sleeping in tents in Galveston, Texas that there were two lions and two tigers roaming the island. Once alerted on Twitter, the personnel immediately moved to a safer location.

One aspect of concern that many don't think about during a disaster is the loneliness. The team at Galveston were very isolated and had to sleep in shifts so that they could provide 24-hour support. Late at night official communications are silent and voice communications can often be poor. Using text messaging and Twitter, staffers up late at night would play games, such as Texas Hold 'Em, just to decompress. The Twitter and SMS communications were critical to the team's mental health. "If you don't have outreach, you can't decompress," said Ramirez.

For the next disaster, Ramirez is setting up a private social network using either CollectiveX or Ning (he hasn't decided which yet) to act as a searchable repository where people from various agencies can post their situations and get input from staff. Ramirez has found that trading experiential knowledge from others who have dealt with similar situations is invaluable to a successful emergency response. All he wants to do now is create a bank of that information that's searchable so his team and others can rely on it.

2 & 3. Survive foreign medical care

World traveler Leigh Shulman (@thefutureisred) has twice turned to Twitter in a crisis. Shulman's family had just moved to Argentina and her husband, Noah, became very ill to the point that he was verbally unresponsive. She had no local phone access but got some support from a neighbor and Twitter. Friends offered support online, but what was more important were the Twitterers who had lived in Argentina and Chile and offered specific advice on dealing with the health care systems there.

What she learned from the Twitterati is that in Argentina you can call for a doctor to make a non-emergency house call at any time. She got the number to call and the cost (55 pesos or about $15 US) so she knew what to expect if someone quoted a higher price. She also learned that it's better to first take a house call before actually going to the hospital. Your hospital visit will go more smoothly with a house call recommendation.

In another situation, Shulman was able to pay forward the favor to a friend of hers who was in Beirut when his dog seemed to be having a seizure and he was nowhere near a vet. Through Twitter she was able to connect her friend to a vet. Within two hours the vet advised Shulman's Beirut friend that he keep the dog as calm as possible and in a dark room. Keep away from his mouth and speak soothingly. And to further calm Shulman's friend, the vet let him know that in general epilepsy in dogs is not as severe as it is humans.

The next day, Shulman heard from her friend via Facebook that his dog was fine and they were going to the vet that day.

4 & 5. The homeless need raincoats right now

Mark Horvath is an advocate for the homeless who admits that if it wasn't for Twitter he’d be homeless himself. Already homeless once before, Horvath knows how tough it can be. Whenever he sees a problem in his homeless community he uses Twitter (@hardlynormal) as a bullhorn to get homeless people the services they need right away.

When he was working for the Burbank Winter Shelter in California, he was responsible for 150 homeless people waiting at a bus shelter about to get rained on. Driving around LA, he asked the Twitterati where he could find raincoats in bulk. He got advice to go to Sportmart and Costco where he cleaned them out of every raincoat they had. But one Twitter follower, Michael Buckingham (@holycowcreative) was so enthralled with Horvath's cause that he blogged about it and raised $453 to buy and ship Horvath another 100 raincoats in just two weeks. The influx of raincoat advice charged Horvath, who joked, "I was on a mission to turn every homeless person in Los Angeles yellow."

In another case, Horvath had a homeless friend, John, who moved to Seattle for a job opportunity only to get mugged upon arrival. Feeling helpless because he didn't know anyone in the area, Horvath tweeted out if anyone in Seattle could help his friend. It was 27 degrees that night and all the winter shelters were full. Within minutes, one person close by to John walked up and handed him $100 so he would have a place to sleep for the night. For the rest of his time in Seattle, another Horvath Twitter follower shared his one bedroom apartment with John.

For more on Horvath, read my previous Mashable article, "5 People Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded." While he's not homeless, Horvath is without an income and relies on reader/viewer donations through his video blog invisiblepeople.tv. For his next adventure, Horvath is planning a cross country road trip to Washington, D.C. where he'll visit tent cities in locations such as Las Vegas, Nashville, and St. Petersburg and let the homeless tell their own stories on his blog. Whrrl is his first sponsor, but he needs more donations and sponsors to make it happen.

Technologies to track a crisis

This is just a sampling of the many stories of how people are using social media to seek help and save each other during a crisis, whether life threatening or not. While social media technologies such as blogging, Twitter, and ChipIn have risen to the occasion to help people in times of crisis, there is now a new market for technologies whose primary purpose is to track disasters and help people in times of need.

One recently launched application, now ready for hurricane season, is Emicus. Arguing that the web and social media have proven to operate a lot more efficiently than FEMA, Emicus aims to aggregate and optimize the flow of information and direct people to rescue services. Another far simpler site to check out is Crisiswire, which tracks and aggregates traditional and social media news from various emergencies.

Got a social media crisis story of your own? Feel free to share the tale with your fellow Mashable readers.

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